Beneath These Frozen Flames
by TheMotherDragon
Summary: Post 5x22. Elena attempts to deal with the seemingly permanent loss of the man she loves. She's always been strong in the face of overwhelming grief. But this isn't just any grief. Will the agony of missing Damon drive her to her darkest place? Rated M because I have no filter.
1. Prologue

It's been requested by more than a few people that I write a story post 5x22 to help us survive this hiatus. I thought I'd need more time to think of something but this came to me out of blue tonight and I figured why the hell not. I have no idea where it's going. I just know the muses are finding their way back to me and I'm in no position to refuse the offering.

As always this is from Elena's perspective.

Do enjoy m'loves.

**Prologue **

I feel cold.

Not the pleasurable sort of cold that comes with winter snow and autumn storms.

Not the kind that heralds the season of giving, of love and home and family.

Not even the kind that courses through you when you drink milkshakes and eat ice cream.

This cold is bitter. Pervasive. Unforgiving.

The cruelest brand of arctic frost has found its way inside me, freezing my entire being to the core.

This cold started in the deepest crevices of my heart and soul. It slowly and sadistically infiltrated every inch of my musculature, flowing through my veins, overpowering my nerves and tendons, settling in my very bones.

This cold has turned my skin to ice, has frosted my lungs and brain, making thinking, breathing and feeling impossible.

Not that I wish to think, to breathe, to feel. Not anymore.

Not when Damon is gone. After all that's when the chill began.

The moment Bonnie told me it was too late, that he was stuck on the Other Side and I would never see him, hear him, feel him again, the agony of frigid loss and glacial despair crept its way into every hidden facet of my spirit, reminding me constantly of what is now forever lost to me.

Damon has always been like a wildfire. An uncontrollable blaze of violent, passionate flames that burned me with every look, every touch, every word and every smirk.

He has always been my warmth. Even when the world seemed like a dark and lonely place, when my spark threatened to give out, he kept my fire raging with his own.

Now he's gone. Eternally out of my reach.

And I will never be warm again.


	2. Chapter 1

I imagine Elena's conscious to be very flashback heavy following Damon's death. I feel like if any loss would drive her to live in her memories just to attempt to survive it would be his. And since we never got to see their amazing summer together I will be drawing the flashbacks from how I imagine it was.

Leave me some love if you're feeling generous. I appreciate the feedback.

Cheers m'dears.

**Chapter One: Chilled To The Bone**

"Memories might keep him alive, but they might kill me."

_I awaken to the smoky smell of bourbon and the feel of the most luxurious cotton. The sun is poring through two magnificent floor to ceiling windows, the thick velvet curtains only slightly drawn against the force of the early morning light. I keep my eyes closed and simply enjoy the comforting atmosphere that surrounds me. _

_The only sound in the room is the gentle breathing of the man sleeping behind me, his left arm tucked firmly and protectively around my waist, the cool metal of his ring just grazing the skin on my right hip. My chest seems to rise and fall with his every quiet exhalation against the back of my neck. _

_I keep very still, careful not to rouse him from his slumber. He exerts so much natural energy throughout the day that I always feel it's important not to wake him before he's ready. _

_Unfortunately he seems to have some subconscious awareness of the slightest fluctuation in my breathing or movement. So even though I am typically the first to rise, he's never long after me, like he feels the need to be up and alert when I am. _

_Almost like clockwork I feel him shift a bit and pull me closer, his voice soft with the vestiges of sleep but no less teasingly amused as he whispers, "Morning sunshine."_

_I smile and open my eyes, moving my left hand from underneath my cheek and reaching down to drag the tips of my fingers along the side of his forearm. I feel him stroke his thumb across my hipbone in response and press a kiss to the crest of my shoulder. _

"_Morning," I sigh happily. _

"_How did you sleep?" he murmurs along the top of my spine, his voice vibrating straight down to my toes. _

_I take my right hand and move my wild brown waves over my right shoulder so the hair won't hinder his perusal of my upper back. The fingers of his left hand start to drag slowly across my lower stomach as his lips shift a little further down my spine._

"_Okay," I finally answer in a near whisper, careful not to disturb the shroud of solitude that presently envelops us. _

"_Hmmm, only okay?" he questions in an equally quiet voice, his mouth forming a pout as he aligns with my shoulder blades, like the idea of my sleep being less than absolutely stellar brings him the utmost displeasure._

_His fingers reach my left hip, his hand curling around it quite possessively, but still just as gently._

"_Only okay. It was a late night after all," I tell him with a touch of sarcasm._

_I feel his lips curve into his telltale smirk as his right hand moves under my side and curls around my other hip. _

"_Yes it was. My fault I suppose," his voice is riddled with innuendo and I can picture his eyebrows doing their dance of flirtation and seduction._

"_You suppose? It's completely your fault." I respond with as much accusation and indignation as I can muster. It isn't much. He's welcome to keep me up all night, every night, for the rest of the summer. I'd never complain. _

_Not that I'm going to tell him that. _

_Suddenly I'm on my stomach, his thighs straddling the back of mine, his hands still curled around my hips, his lips at my ear. _

"_I won't make apologies for our… bedroom activities Elena. If you want nights of long, uninterrupted sleep you should be living with Barbie. But you're not. You're living with me. Which was your idea if I remember correctly."_

_He says all of this in the sassiest of low voices imaginable, his hands skimming down the backs of my thighs so slowly I erupt in delightful shivers. I feel his lips move behind my ear, not quite kissing but not quite nuzzling the shockingly sensitive line where my hair meets the skin of my neck._

_He's right, of course. Moving in with him was my idea. I never even considered living with one of my friends. As soon as being in my childhood home was no longer an option my mind immediately went to the boarding house. _

_This place had always felt like a second home anyway. I'd certainly spent enough time here. _

_But he's being so infuriatingly and accurately assumptive about my choice to live with him that I can't bring myself to be placating and agree with him. So I opt for stubbornness instead._

"_My idea? I don't recall you offering up any alternatives. You didn't even hesitate to move me into your room. Maybe it was part of your master plan to hold me hostage in your bed. And I fell right into the trap." I'm being cheeky and I know it but he started it. _

_And apparently he's prepared to finish it because the next thing I know I'm on my back looking into teasing ocean blue eyes with my hands pinned on either side of my head. I feel a thrill I can't suppress, a smile fighting its way onto my lips as I watch him watch me like he's deciding what to do with me next._

_Suddenly the waves of his irises seem to rise up like the tide, as though he's had the most ingenious idea ever. A pleasant swirl of metal butterflies begins to flutter in my stomach in earnest as I see the left corner of his mouth quirk up. _

_His smirk is positively dangerous. And fucking sexy. _

_In a flash his hands are digging into my sides and his face is buried in my neck with teasing urgency and I'm gasping and sputtering and laughing uncontrollably. _

_I love waking up with him. He's so different in the early morning than any other time of day. It's a side of him that I'm positive no one besides me has ever seen before. _

_Rather than being typically flirty or playful or seductive or obnoxious or any of his other public personality defaults, he morphs into a combination of them all tempered by sweet serenity. The kind you only get from genuine, unwavering happiness._

_He's beautiful like this. Cuddly and frisky and strangely adorable. Which is not a word I'd ever have used to describe him in the past. _

_I feel like this is the only time he's comfortable letting all his walls down. It's a safe time in a safe place. With someone he trusts. Someone he loves. _

_Someone who loves him back. _

_When his hands migrate to the devilishly ticklish spot behind my knees I shriek at him in surprise and outrage and closeted exuberance. _

"_Damon!"_

I jolt awake, my heart racing, my lungs fighting for air, tears streaming down my cheeks. My skin is flushed pink but still just as cold as ever.

Not again.

Sleep should be a reprieve shouldn't it? I should be able to escape from the cold and the sorrow and the emptiness in sleep. I'm unconscious after all. Unaware of my surroundings, no thoughts, no feelings, just the supposedly comforting haven of incognizance.

But it seems I'm not even granted that small grace. I'm cursed to feel this pain, this frigid agony always, with no end in sight.

It's been the same since that first morning after he died. I was broken and inconsolable the entire night, unable to find any peace from the proffered support of Caroline, Matt and Ric. I spent as much time as I could focusing on my brother and his despair to keep my mind occupied, but eventually the icy grip of nightmarish misery threatened to suffocate me. So I retired to my room at the family lake house.

I didn't bother to shower or change clothes. I removed my shoes and climbed into bed underneath every cover I could get my hands on. I curled into a ball, shoving my frostbitten hands into my jacket, resting my forehead against the tops of my knees.

I'd never been so cold before. I couldn't seem to hide from it.

Burrowed under blankets and comforters, still dressed in jeans and a jacket and socks, wrapped completely around myself, I couldn't get warm. All I could do was shiver, a prisoner to my ice slicked skin.

The cold wasn't in the air. It wasn't being forced on me by something else.

It was in me. Hollowed in what remains of my heart, it pumped sluggishly through my veins, replaced the marrow of my bones and sinews of my muscles with crystalline liquid, frosted the tips of my fingers and toes like an Antarctic blizzard.

I didn't really notice it that first night. Once I was alone - really alone, away from the worried gazes of others - the tears I'd been holding back for hours made their presence known again with force.

In all the grief I've experienced in my life I know I've never cried as much or as long as I did that night. It was never-ending, a constant outpour of vicious sobs that made breathing and thinking impossible. I made no attempt to chase sleep, knowing I'd never catch it until my body and mind were too exhausted to stay awake.

So instead I drowned in my tears and pulled at my hair and tried to breathe around the vice of cold despair that held my lungs captive.

I fell into a horrible sleep once my eyes dried out. I was drained physically, mentally and emotionally, yet I found no respite.

Because while I ached from the loss of him in consciousness, he haunted my dreams in unconsciousness.

He assaulted my sleep, invading what was left of my sanity with his overwhelming presence in my past. Every single second we had ever spent together over the last three years was determined to play out in my head while I tried to escape from the fresh hell of my waking life.

Every night it was a new memory. They didn't seem to adhere to any rhyme or reason, instead deciding to pop up out of order to remind me of how far we had come together.

I was forced to watch us fall in love all over again in my dreams.

They weren't even like normal dreams where something always appears a little off, that way you can't mistake it for anything real.

They were more like flashbacks. Like my unconscious mind was making a conscious effort to remember our time together in explicit detail, to ensure that I would never forget him.

As if such a thing was even in the realm of possibility. I could never forget him.

He was everywhere. In me and around me, his heart and soul eternally a part of me, his influence surrounding me, his absence destroying me from the inside out.

The destruction isn't even kind enough to happen all at once. It's chosen to draw itself out, to slowly and torturously ruin me a little more everyday in increasingly more inventive ways.

It started with the cold, which made it's presence known as soon as his absence did.

Because I felt Damon leave the earth. Not just leave me or the crypt or the cemetery or the outskirts of Mystic Falls, but the earth.

I felt him move on. Where, I have no idea. But I know the moment he passed completely out of my reach.

It was only one second. It all happened so quickly. Like a starkly abstract portrait of 'before and after.'

One second I could feel his touch from the Other Side and his ghostly presence in the crypt, and then the cemetery. I was bawling and pleading with him not to go and shaking from the purest form of desolation I've ever encountered in almost twenty years on this earth.

The next I was numb. Numb from emptiness. Numb from loneliness. Numb from fear and sorrow.

But mostly numb from cold.

It was a bizarre sensation. Not like having your switch flipped and burying emotion. More like feeling too much at once and short circuiting at the basest level.

I feel nothing now. The cold erodes all physical sensation. The emptiness and loneliness eclipses all emotion beyond those I'd rather not feel. The fear and sorrow keeps me from thinking of anything other than him. And how he isn't here with me.

My destruction is obviously some layered plot devised by the universe to confine me in the deepest circle of hell on earth for the rest of my immortal existence.

At some point the cold and I developed an understanding. I recognized it wasn't going anywhere, that it was one of many things he left behind when he died.

Or perhaps it was more because of what he took with him. His warmth, his passion and protection, his love, his strength.

His fire.

No matter how bad things seemed to be between us there had always been fire. Warmth. He naturally infused my world with heat and light of every kind, mysterious and confusing as it might have been at times.

And now he's gone. Now the sun and moon and stars have burnt out, the light of the world fading into obscurity in the wake of his unprecedented and unacceptable disappearance.

Now I'm frozen to the core, terrified and alone and chilled to the bone for all time.

I'll never be safe again. I'll never be happy again. I'll never be warm again.

I'll never love again.

And even though he never will be again, all I want is for him to be here with me when I wake up from these accursed dreams of our passionate life together.

All I want is for him to hold me.


	3. Chapter 2

I am told that I have shattered your emotions. And that you want more.

Ask and you shall receive.

This particular flashback is a head canon I've had of Damon and Elena for a long time. I'd like to think this could've happened during their summer of love. I have a special weakness for their quiet moments. The ones that no one ever sees. And I'm certain those would be the memories Elena would cling to in his absence.

Proceed with caution my darlings.

**Chapter Two: Slow Dancing In A Burning Room**

"I have to admit that he touches something deep inside me that makes me shiver - a part of myself even I don't understand."

My dreams have become a terrifying sanctuary.

I fear falling asleep more than anything because of what I am forced to relive. Yet I revel in the pain the flashbacks give me.

They're the only proof I have that he was real. That WE were real.

That our love and our anguish and our passion was a tangible part of my life rather than something I fantasized to survive the original loss of my parents.

Despite how much I yearn for the numb oblivion to accompany the unyielding frost I carry within me, I haven't flipped the switch. I can't. Every part of my body, every instinct I have screams at me to give in to the sweet release of emptiness. I crave the emotionless reprieve like I do blood or oxygen.

But I fight it. I have too.

I won't turn it off.

Twisted as it is, I need the pain. It's a reminder that he was once here, torturous as his absence now is for me.

Above all, I can't bring myself to indulge an existence where I don't love him. And if I turn off my emotions, I won't any longer. Everything I've ever felt for him will fade into nothing as the all consuming vacuum of non humanity envelops me.

Perhaps it would be better if I felt nothing. Perhaps I would function better.

Perhaps I wouldn't be so cold and alone and afraid. Perhaps even the flashbacks would fall away so I could sleep through just one night.

Still I won't turn it off.

I won't forget the way I love him. I refuse to discard what I feel for him in favor of escaping the pain. I can't hide it somewhere I might never find it again. I'm not me if I don't love him and right now, I'm all I have left, even if what I am is a shell of a person frozen to the core by the agony of my despair.

I don't want to forget one second of our time together. Not one fight, not one touch, not one kiss or look or smirk. None of it. I will freeze to death from the inside out before I cave and lock away my love and memories and misery.

I don't know who I am without my love for Damon. I can't just put it away to spare myself pain.

My love for him is the only part of him that is still with me now that he's taken my essence with him to the grave. If his love can no longer lift me up and make me strong and protect me from all I could ever fear, then I must rely on my love for him, or he will fade into nothingness with my emotions.

And I won't allow him to be nothing.

He deserves better. He deserves everything.

Monuments erected in his honor.

Plaques scattered throughout every museum in the world.

Bottles of bourbon stacked to the moon in celebration of him and all that he was.

He deserved the world. I tried to give it to him as he did to me.

I failed. He's gone and I failed and now he'll never know.

He'll never know that he was my life, my everything, my reason for being and choosing to stay immortal and finally accepting myself as a vampire. He'll never know because he's gone. And I'm alone.

But I won't turn it off. I owe him that.

I owe him everything.

_I rarely wake up in bed alone anymore. These days I find myself wrapped in a pair of strong arms, and when I open my eyes I am greeted with sweet touches and deep kisses and beautiful cerulean irises that feel like a caress all their own as they look upon me with love._

_So I'm a little surprised when I stir in the middle of the night to find his side of the bed empty. _

_I sit up and run my fingers through my tousled hair once, fighting off the last vestiges of sleep as I puzzle through the mystery of his glaring absence. A glance at the clock tells me it's three thirty in the morning. _

_What could he possibly be doing up so late? We'd fallen asleep together two hours ago. He doesn't exactly have the most normal sleeping patterns so it's not out of character for him to be awake. But it is out of character for him to not be here with me even if he is. _

_Curiosity peaked I utilize my heightened vampire senses to hunt him down in this exceptionally large house. I stretch my hearing as far and wide as the house is long, careful to acknowledge even the softest of sounds for a hint of what I'm looking for. Just like he taught me. _

_I finally catch the strains of music playing quietly in the front living room. It's a gentle sort of song. Strangely melancholy and sweet with no words and only one instrument. _

_The piano. _

_He's playing the piano._

_I freeze immediately, not daring to move or breathe for fear his own incredible hearing will discover that I'm awake and eavesdropping on him. I hold stock still with my legs tucked under me and the sheet just reaching to cover the top of my naked chest. And I listen._

_I knew he played. He mentioned it to me once offhandedly when I asked if the piano was just for show or if anyone actually used it. At the time I just accepted it as another relevant detail of his complex history. _

_He played the piano, or knew how to at least. He never told me when he learned, or how, or why he only sat on that bench occasionally to pass the time when he was alone._

_Curiouser and curiouser._

_Typical Damon. _

_I listened harder, determined not to miss a note of the darkly romantic piece he was unknowingly gracing me with. The song sounded familiar, and yet altogether obscure and mysterious, like a beautiful sort of deja vu shrouded in a minor key that only exists in the dead of night. _

_Like Damon himself. A shadowy force of dark and twisted impulses mired in heartbreak and passion and vicious love. He was something like this song when we first met on that abandoned road. Familiar to deep, unthinkable corners of my soul, but still a stranger to my conscious mind. I remember wondering why I felt so comfortable opening up to that gorgeous enigma of a man with his leather jacket and far too suggestive smirk._

_Perhaps that was why he was playing this song. Perhaps he felt the same things when we met. _

_Perhaps he was feeling nostalgic tonight. _

_My own nostalgia for the meeting I never knew of until six months ago propelled me from the bed none too quietly. I quickly scoured the floor of the room for the remnants of any clothes from earlier, but as usual barely anything was salvageable. _

_A month into our time as an official couple where no one's feelings were in doubt and nothing was trying to come between us and we still couldn't manage to make it into bed without tearing something off of each other. I suppose that was mostly my fault. I had an addictive predilection for ripping Damon's shirts in the heat of the moment. _

_I couldn't help it. Anytime we started to lose ourselves my brain shifted into sex autopilot, a setting I wasn't aware I possessed until my first night with Damon. When he kisses me my thoughts fade into oblivion, leaving nothing but sensation and instinct and this overwhelming love and lust and need that I have no control over. _

_So I rip his shirts. Because I need him closer as fast as possible. Because the feel of his hands and his lips is not enough. I need more. Always more with him._

_I glanced down at myself as I headed for the door, realizing I was wearing much the same thing as I had been the morning after our first time. I'd waltzed out of Damon's bathroom clad in my bra and panties, covered only by his black button down from the previous night. Tonight the only difference was in color; rather than black, the makeshift ensemble was a deep navy blue. _

_And I know he loves me in blue._

_I smile to myself as I hit the landing, pleased to hear that he hasn't stopped playing despite the fact that he knows I'm awake by now. I haven't been loud, but he hears everything no matter how silent I attempt to be. He's so in tune with his heightened vampire senses that trying to sneak up on him is futile. _

_So I don't bother being stealthy. I also don't rush. He's still playing that same slow, seductive song tinged in gloomy mystery. I find myself prancing down the stairs to its tempo, leisurely and gentle, with an unfathomable purpose that lingers at the edge of consciousness. _

_When I reach the doorway of the living room I wait, leaning against the wall and watching him as he plays. The room is dark apart from the light of the fire in the grate against the far wall. He's shirtless, in nothing but his dark jeans, his back muscles flexing ever so slightly, his hair in a casual disarray._

_I note with amusement that he could probably use a haircut. _

_The song starts to wind down, growing softer and slower as he takes a sip of his bourbon and I realize he's playing this masterpiece one handed. If this is what it sounds like with half the notes I can't even imagine how beautiful the full piece must be. _

_Show off. _

_With that thought I push off the wall and walk to stand behind him, wrapping both arms around his neck and pressing my lips into his messy hair. _

"_What song is this?" I finally ask as I rest my chin on the crown of his head._

"_One of Chopin's Nocturnes. It sounds even creepier in its entirety." I can hear the smirk in his voice. As the song comes to a close, he brings his glass to his lips and finishes off his bourbon before setting it on top of the piano. _

"_It's not creepy. It's beautiful." _

"_Are you talking about me or the song?" He cranes his neck back to look at me with a smirk and a waggle of his eyebrows. I fight my smile and lose miserably, leaning forward to press a kiss to his upside down lips. _

"_Definitely the song," I whisper before I pull away. _

_He just laughs and winks at me. The smug bastard. _

_I walk around the bench slowly, coming to stand between his jean clad legs. His hands immediately reach for my hips and pull me closer, his eyes roaming over the sight of me in his shirt. The smile that graces his lips is content, something so soft and sweet and peaceful you'd never dare suspect it would ever be seen on Damon Salvatore._

_I know he's only smiling like that because it's me. Me standing between him and his antique piano. Me living in his house and sharing his bed. Me wearing his shirt, stroking the skin of his cheeks with my thumbs. _

_And that knowledge sends a thrill through my bones that I can't suppress. It makes me feel powerful, beautiful, wanted._

_Most of all, it makes me feel loved. _

_I don't know how he manages that actually. Making me feel loved and desired and protected with his eyes and his smile and his touch. I've never experienced that before. With Matt or Stefan, words had been needed. Whispers of sweet nothings and gestures of epic love were par for the course. Especially with Stefan._

_None of that is necessary with Damon. I feel every ounce of his love and passion for me with just a look into his gorgeous ocean eyes or a momentary brush of his hand over my hair or my cheek. _

_It's one of my favorite things about being his girlfriend._

_My stomach flips in happiness with that thought. I never dreamed we'd be here, together, like this._

_But here we are._

_I glance up at his eyes to find him watching me thoughtfully. Suddenly assaulted with a need to be closer to him, I move to straddle his lap on the piano bench, wrapping my arms around his neck again. _

"_What has you awake playing hauntingly beautiful music at three in the morning?" I ask as my fingers start to play with the hair at the back of his neck. _

_He doesn't answer right away. His hands shift from my hips to rest on the outside of my bare thighs._

_I look and find his eyes are on my legs, and my own follow suit as I wait for him to respond._

"_I wasn't going to play. I don't really anymore. But I came down for a drink and I sat down at this bench and started fiddling with the keys, which somehow morphed into that song."_

_I couldn't place his mood. He was so pensive and quiet as he said it. It was unfamiliar to me._

"_Why don't you play anymore?" I had no idea what he was feeling but I was determined to find out._

_He huffed out a breath. Again I couldn't tell if he was upset or just unnaturally calm. _

"_I haven't made it a habit to stay in one place like this for years Elena. I haven't had a home in a long time. This is new to me. Building a life with someone. Being with someone I want to be with and having them feel the same."_

_He stated this all like pure fact. His voice was completely neutral, betraying no emotion._

_I didn't buy it. _

_I curled my index finger under his chin and coaxed him to look at me. When his eyes met mine I tried to find the source of his bizarre and unplaceable mood. _

_After a minute I asked him again. "So why don't you play anymore?"_

_His left hand came up and tucked a stray hair behind my ear. _

"_I haven't had anyone to play for." He said this with a hint of a smile, a little of his trademark playfulness bleeding back into his voice and his eyes._

_But for some reason those words made me want to cry. In the haze of our happy month as a couple I'd forgotten he'd never had this before. He'd waited over a century to have a life and a home with the woman he loved only to find out she'd never reciprocated his devotion._

_And it gave me a savage sort of pleasure to know I'd taken something from her when I shoved the cure down her throat. Just as she'd taken something from him. Nothing should ever be taken from him. Especially not his capacity for love._

_Although in the long run, it was better that she didn't want him as he did her. Because she didn't deserve to be looked at like Damon was looking at me now. She had no right to hear him play such sweet, sad songs in the middle of the night. She was unworthy of his consuming passion and dangerous desire._

_I was almost grateful to her for her inability to see what I see in Damon. I'd much rather be the one to give him the love he'd always craved. I wasn't sure I could stomach seeing her relish in his attentions._

_I wanted to revel in his love. In our love. _

_I leaned forward to brush our lips together before resting my forehead against his own. _

"_You can play for me whenever you like," I breathed into the space between us. "Maybe even with both hands next time." _

_He laughed under his breath and tugged me a bit closer on his lap. "I'll remember that," he whispered back._

_We were quiet for a minute, my hands still twirling the ends of his hair, his stroking the backs of my thighs so softly I swear I felt tingles all the way to my toes. _

_He finally pulled back and gave me an appraising look before reaching behind his head and grabbing my right hand in his left. Drawing it between us, he dragged his thumb over my knuckles, stopping at my daylight ring briefly. _

"_Dance with me?" he asked with barely a twitch in his eyebrows and a kiss to the back of my hand._

_I swooned. And smiled like a shy, lovestruck schoolgirl, nodding my acceptance._

_It all felt strangely familiar. And yet entirely new. _

_He put his hands back on my hips, set me on my feet, stood up and grabbed my hand again to lead me to the fireplace. _

_Our fireplace._

_The site of so many fights and pleasures and intimacies. The blazing backdrop for moments of honesty and passion between us. _

_Like our first night together. Or the beginnings of it, at least._

_He took my hand in his sweet and cautious, just as he had that night. We'd slow danced to nothing but the crackle of the flames and the beating of our dead hearts before we finally erased our last physical boundary line, indulging in some fire of our own._

_That night had been filled with emotion. Uncertainty and anxiety and even sadness, but also acceptance and love and truth, and so much desire I still tremble at the memory of it. _

_This night was emotional too. But not because we were jumping headfirst into the treacherous waters of our overzealous passion. This time we weren't traversing unexplored terrain._

_This time we were savoring the more familiar nature of our mutual ardor. _

_He held me close to him, hand curled around mine like they were made for each other, temples resting together, eyes closed in comfort and bliss._

_There was nothing like dancing with Damon. Although there was nothing like anything with Damon. Every experience, no matter how commonplace, seemed to pulse with intensity and power and excitement. Everything that happened with or around Damon was somehow unique to Damon. Always. _

_Dancing was no exception. He was so comfortable with himself physically. And it showed. _

_Only Damon could be arrogant and confident in movement. _

_It wasn't off-putting though. It was soothing in the strangest way. It made me feel so safe, knowing he had such control and awareness in every situation. _

_Peculiar, considering he's naturally impulsive. _

_I felt him shift his hand smoothly from my waist up my spine and into my wild hair, drawing my forehead from his own and bringing it to his lips for a moment before tucking it into the curve of his neck and shoulder. I smiled contently and pressed my lips there. _

_As we swayed to no rhythm but our own by the fire, I couldn't help but wonder if this was inevitable. If we were always going to end up here, like this, wrapped around each other physically, mentally and emotionally, not one without the other. If we'd been running towards this - towards each other - from the beginning. _

_I think we were. We were meant to be here, to be together, now. _

_Slow dancing in a burning room. _


	4. Chapter 3

I never intended for this to be very long. It was simply a painful experiment to help us all survive the hiatus. As the show starts up again in a matter of weeks, I'm thinking after this chapter there will be two more. And perhaps an epilogue to set up some context for the one shot I already posted about their reunion in the rain because in my head, everything I've written since 5x22 aired all goes together.

This one is a touch shorter than the last. And the head canon is a small taste of something I know we all want in a DE scene. Let me know what you think.

Cheers m'dears.

**Chapter Three: What A Lovely Way To Burn**

"There are some people who could hear you speak a thousand words and still not understand you. And there are others who will understand without you even speaking a word."

They started as whispers. Shadows.

In the deepest quiet of the night, as I lay staring into space and contemplating the futility of my current existence, trying and failing to warm my frosted skin, it happened.

A phantom touch to my cheek. A ghostly sigh of love wrapped in the softest utterance of my name.

"_Elena."_

At first I startled so fiercely I crashed to the floor in my surprise.

I knew that touch. I knew that voice.

It couldn't be. It was impossible.

He was gone. He had to be. Otherwise I wouldn't be sitting here, attempting to fight off the perpetual cold that had infiltrated my every sense in the wake of his disappearance.

"_Elena." _

It didn't sound like he was calling for me from some great beyond. It sounded like he was taunting me. My name held the same teasing lilt it always had when we'd first met and he was trying to rattle me into absolute annoyance.

Every syllable was drawn out in that condescendingly seductive way he had about him. His tone was amused and arrogant and perhaps a touch exasperated, like I'd just done or said something to aggravate him in ways he'd never encountered in 173 years of living.

"_Elena."_

How was this happening? What was this supposed to be? Was I dreaming? It felt like I was awake but I've been so out of it recently that it was entirely possible I was mistaken.

Except I don't think I'd respond in this fashion if it was a dream. And I don't think I'd merely be hearing some ethereal, disembodied voice from god knows where that sounded eerily like my long lost love. If I were dreaming I'd be able to see him as well.

There was no spirit-like presence accompanying this voice, this touch. It was simply there, haunting me, creeping inside of me. Not unlike the pervasive cold that so overwhelmed my physical being.

Which could only mean one thing.

I was going crazy.

After months of suffering the endless physical torment of my frigid despair, marinating in the frozen prison that was my own body, it appeared the agony of losing Damon was continuing its assault in new and deadlier ways.

It was infiltrating my mind now. And not with a barrage of torturous memories that paint a portrait of our much too short time together. No this was much worse.

This was a slap in the face. A punch in the gut. A stab in the heart.

As if I needed more reminders that Damon is no longer with me, now it appears I am to be followed by the sound of his voice speaking my name. Forever.

A part of me wants to rejoice. I've been worried I may start to forget things about him as time goes on. Like the sound of his voice or the exact blue of his eyes or the spicy smell of his skin. But it seems my subconscious has perfectly preserved Damon's voice in my memory. He sounds just as he did before.

The only problem is it isn't really him. And I know that. I know it's nothing more than a figment of my imagination, a conjuration of a desperate and broken mind clinging in vain to the shadow of her missing counterpart.

So I can't enjoy the miracle of hearing him speak my name with such confidence and sarcasm mired in affection and a touch of innuendo. I'd almost rather not hear it at all than be reminded of all the beautiful ways Damon has ever said 'Elena.'

Like during fights, when he tried to persuade me in his rage to see things his way.

Or after he saved my life any one of a hundred times, and my name carried every ounce of his relief that I was okay.

Or in more flirtatious moments, as I tried (and failed) to fight my attraction to him.

But especially in the heat of passion, where my name sounded so much like 'I love you' that he never even needed to say it to assure me of his feelings. I just knew.

And the touches were no different. They spoke more to me about what he was feeling or thinking than words ever could.

It was one of many things I missed most about him. That we didn't always have to talk.

With Damon, I could just be.

_I'd never experienced intimacy like the kind I shared with Damon. The way we could communicate with barely a look or a touch was a sensation entirely unique to us. There were times I felt we'd had a wonderful conversation with nary a word whispered between us, only the brush of pale fingers on olive skin, the sight of oceanic blue accompanied by a dash of raven's black. _

_It was fascinating. How words weren't always needed. We seemed to simply understand certain things about each other without the necessity of explanation. _

_As if the words we didn't say, the sweet nothings and passionate declarations, were already so much a part of us both that it took only the slightest reminder - a thumb caressing a stubbled jaw or a palm resting on the small of a back - to inspire recognition. _

_As if they were the murmurings of our very souls. _

_We conversed in this quietly familiar manner of ours all summer. For all the time we spent together, we didn't always engage in long-winded discussion. More often than not, when it was just the two of us, we let our bodies do the talking._

_Not just sex. You'd expect that considering Damon's reputation, but it went so far beyond the undeniable pleasure of our physical relationship._

_It was the before and after. The in-between moments. The stillness that surrounded us as we pressed our foreheads together before a kiss or lay in a satisfied heap on the floor after a romp._

_Or right now. Lounging in that magnificent tub in our bathroom. Nothing but skin and water. Bubbles of both the bath salt and champagne kind invading every inch of space between us._

_There wasn't much. _

_I loved that this porcelain masterpiece was big enough for two. It was like a small, private jacuzzi. I could stretch my legs out comfortably with my back against Damon's chest, his arms wrapped securely around my belly. _

_We hadn't spoken in awhile, content to merely sit and enjoy the strange delight of our silence. Whenever either of us felt we might have something to say, we chose to impart it with kisses and nuzzles, caresses and squeezes._

_I'd never have pegged Damon Salvatore as the cuddly type, but he seemed to relish the opportunity to hold me close for as long as he pleased as much as any of our other activities. _

_Of course, after awhile, the nuzzles and squeezes always morphed into something more. Maybe one of his hands would stray a bit lower or I would let out a sound a little too much like a moan. _

_And then we'd snap. _

_My thighs would part a little wider and my back would arch a little more and before I know it, his hands would shift into infinitely more intimate waters._

_But there are still no words spoken. Just as we are able to speak when we hold hands or caress a cheek or rub noses, we can communicate as effectively when the touches become a little rougher and the kisses a lot deeper. _

_So even though the water in the tub starts to cool and the bubbles start to disappear, the fire we create is enough to satisfy the missing warmth. _

_Honestly, the way the fire blazed between us I was constantly wondering how we both didn't simply implode upon contact. The slightest stirring of air as we did something as innocent and unassuming as breathe or smile while inhabiting the same space had the potential to cause a flaming sort of disaster._

_It used to irk me, that he brought so much out of me. Our encounters, even the good ones when we didn't fight, drained me and empowered me simultaneously. It was exhausting, the amount of intensity that raged when Damon and I were within ten feet of each other, let alone laughing or fighting or speaking or, god forbid, touching. _

_That was when we really felt it. That was where the flames erupted most explosively. _

_When we touched, I swear fire licked at my skin and scorched my bones. I felt him everywhere. It was almost ridiculous, how warm he made me. He emitted this glow that threatened to envelop the earth. _

_Or maybe that was just me. _

_It was captivating. Addicting. Exquisite and surreal like I've never known._

_Bizarre isn't it? To crave the sensation of fire so viscerally. To need the blaze in order to make sense of yourself. Like it calls to you, reminding you of things you'd forgotten in the haze of a harsh and unforgiving world. _

_That was Damon for me. Fire may be wild, may be the purest form of destruction and insanity but it brings a necessary clarity with its chaos. As he did for me. He blew into my life and wreaked havoc on everything within reach. But I see things more clearly now than I ever did before we met. _

_I'm so grateful to him for that. For changing my life in the best and worst of ways. He was a choice I made everyday that was so wrong it could only and ever be right. _

_At the end of it all, what we had, no matter how overwhelming and all-consuming and perhaps even a little frightening, was just such a lovely way to burn. _


End file.
